The ‘Am-Brit’ mess

You have to give it to the American propaganda machine. U.S. officials and America’s long list of self-styled ‘Pakistan experts’ are advising Islamabad to stop meddling in Afghanistan. But it is kosher for the U.S. military to travel half the world to occupy Afghanistan and that’s not meddling. Well guess what, Pakistan has more pressing interests as a next door neighbor of Afghanistan and it will protect its interests. Who says CIA’s interests in Afghanistan are more sacred than ISI’s?

Regardless of what many of his Pakistani cheerleaders say, President Obama’s new ‘Af-Pak’ policy is a lot of mumbo jumbo that conceals two basic threads: expanding the war inside Pakistan and using the pretext of a ‘regional approach’ to bring India into Afghanistan as Washington and London’s new slave-soldier, especially when NATO members won’t deliver. Surely Washington is not thinking about empowering the Chinese or the Iranians in Afghanistan as part of its newfound regionalism.

The best part is the expanded aid package for Pakistan. It comes with so many ifs that we might as well voluntarily dismantle the ISI, declare defeat, forget about Kashmir and dedicate the rest of the 21st century to carrying America’s burden in Central Asia. To make the package believable, US officials have leaked information through the usual suspects – NYT and WSJ – about a possible ‘exit strategy’, as in America running away from Afghanistan. But America is still in Iraq despite all the hype to the contrary by the Anglo-American media. And it is definitely staying in Afghanistan for as long as possible. We appreciate the American concerns about all the anti-America conspiracies being hatched in the caves of Tora Bora, but surely America also has an eye or two on the vast strategic benefits of controlling Afghanistan.

Some Pakistani officials see Mr. Obama’s new policy as a win for Pakistan because, they claim, Washington is now planning to do what Islamabad has been advocating since 2001, namely negotiating with the Afghan Taliban and giving Pakistan all the weapons it needs to fight Al Qaeda. If this is the case, there certainly isn’t anything in the public statements of US officials that leads to this optimism, unless there is a secret side to this new policy that only a few in Islamabad know about. So far it looks more like Pakistani officials misleading their people about the extent of the Zardari-Gilani government’s capitulation before the Americans. Otherwise, how to explain that the government welcomed Obama’s policy within minutes of the speech, only to be followed by the most intensive verbal attacks by senior US military officials against Pakistan’s military intelligence community, as if the Afghan blunders are entirely of our making?

The danger of complete Pakistani surrender to an imposed war is heightened because of signs that Washington is using Pakistan’s flawed democracy as a tool to meddle and to keep Pakistan politically unstable. If our government is honest with Pakistanis and has not just sold us for a few billion dollars, someone in this government should have the courage to declare that Washington does not have the right to equate Pakistan with a failed state like the US-occupied and administered Afghanistan. Someone should also have the courage to say that we will henceforth not entertain any ‘Af-Pak special coordinators’. Additionally, we in Pakistan must keep an equal distance from all players inside Afghanistan. But at the same time we should say it without embarrassment that we have no strategic conflict of interest with one of the key Afghan parties – the Afghan Taliban – just because America and its puppet regime in Kabul have problems with them. Why should we pick up a fight that is not ours? Sure, Al Qaeda are our enemies and we have killed so many important ones among them that our intentions here cannot be questioned. But it is not Pakistan’s responsibility to eliminate the Afghan Taliban. The Americans must bring them on board in Kabul

Washington and its list of ‘Af-Pak’ experts should stop treating our region as a laboratory for their strategic experiments. Instead of toying with silly ideas like backing ‘secular Pashtuns’ against the Taliban, the Americans can diffuse the entire tension in our region by sharing power with the Pashtuns in Kabul instead of the motley crew of Karzai, the drug lords and the assortment of former communist officials who sit in key offices today.

This American-British mess – the ‘Am-Brit’ – is the reason why Pakistan’s entire western regions are disturbed today and there are those busy ‘convincing’ us that the ‘Am-Brit’ scheme of things is the best option for us. The question is: Whose side our government is on?